[mark0077]

Originally Posted by Mercury_22

How are your speaker labeled ?

e.g. Logitech Z-5500 a 5.1 digital surround sound speaker system:
Digital Satellites:
Left/Right: 62 watts RMS x 2 (into 8 ohms, @ 1khz, @ 10% THD)
Center: 69 watts RMS (into 8 ohms, @ 1kHz, @ 10% THD)
Rear Left & Right: 62 watts RMS x 2 (into 8 ohms, @ 1kHz, @ 10% THD)

Or from Creative T6200 also a 5.1 speaker system :

Flexible layout options
Get the perfect speaker system for a place with limited space. The design of the speakers allows you to stack the rear satellite speakers on top of the front satellites and enjoy frontal surround experience.

P.S. Previously I was referring to windows's dolby decoder, or better to WMP

Yeah Megaworks 550 also labelled the surrounds as rear, not "side" or "back" just rear, so obviously this debate wasn't an issue when my speakers, or the ones you mentioned were created, no talk of side or back in either case.

Still no documentation or webpage that shows me one or the other is correct for definite, just everything either points to side rather than back OR doesn't point to either.

If there is no definitive answer, does software like mpc-hc have the ability to choose side or back when outputting to the OS / Audio Renderer / whatever is next in the chain.... If so the option should be provided in the application because (i know i have said it like 10 times) but everything I have read leads me to believe side is correct rather than back, if one or the other should be used over the other.

Thanks for all of the workarounds guys, setting channels to X, moving my analog connections to back versus side on my soundcard, but for the thousands of others that don't have the luxury of reading this thread, they can't get such benefit. I feel something should be done. Either defaults be set to match what is found to be correct from the available documentation (if possible), and / or provide an option for side versus back output for surrounds. Preferably both?